When you’ve been sent some bottles of refreshing Grace Foods Aloe Drink to try and you want explore what you can do with it, apart from enjoy drinking it, then what else can you do, except make a deliciously moist and tasty cake?

Well, this is exactly what happened recently and exactly what I did. So, read on, get your apron on, your ingredients out and enjoy some time in the kitchen before tucking into a slice (or two) of this deliciously moist cake.

Bake for 65-70 minutes until the cake has just started to shrink from the edges of the tin and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the thickest part of the cake.

Allow to cook in the tin for 5 minutes, whilst you make the glaze.

In a small saucepan, heat the caster sugar and Aloe Vera Drink until boiling, then reduce the heat to a rolling boil and the syrup has reduced by half.

Using your skewer, make a series of small holes in the flat surface of the cake and slowly spoon half of the glaze over the cake, allowing it to soak in fully.

Invert the tin onto a wire cooking rack and prick the top with your skewer all over then, gently and slowly spoon the other half of your glaze over the top of the cake, again allowing it to soak in fully.

Leave the cake to cool completely.

Mix together the Aloe Vera Drink and mango purée, then sieve the the icing sugar into it, mixing thoroughly until you get a thickish icing.

Gently pour the icing over the top of the cake, allowing it to drizzle down the outside edge and into the centre hollow.

You can find mango purée and coconut milk in the international food aisle of your local supermarket. I tend to use my Kenwood Major Titanium stand mixer to make cakes in if it involves beating the mixture for several minutes as it leaves me to get on with setting up the next stage of my preparation. If it’s something that only needs a very quick mix, then I use my Kenwood K-Mix hand mixer instead.

Grace Foods sent me some bottles of their Aloe Refresh Aloe Vera Drinks to sample. I was under no obligation to develop any recipes or provide a review of their products in return for these drinks.

Wow! That’s a mouthful of a recipe title for sure! However, it does tell you exactly what’s in the cookies I made, doesn’t it?

Inspired by the original recipe by the finalist of the Great British Bake Off, Holly Bell, which is incredibly versatile and can easily be altered, depending on your mood and fancy. Last night, I decided to go a little Persian with some wonderfully fragrant Nielsen Massey Rosewater, some delicious green pistachios from Sainsbury’s, along with some cranberry & blueberry mix which I’d bought from Holland and Barratt and some creamy chunks of Callebeaut white chocolate. The recipe made about 21 cookies (I forgot to count before we started eating them, still slightly warm from the oven, sorry!)

250g Butter, room temperature

150g Soft brown sugar

1½tsp Nielsen Massey Rosewater

150g Self Raising flour

230g Quaker Porridge Oats

100g Cranberry & Blueberry mix

100g White chocolate chunks

100g Pistachios, chopped

Preheat your oven to 160ºC.

Line your baking sheets with parchment paper (I used 4 baking sheets and baked them in pairs).

Cream the butter and sugar, along with the rosewater until light and fluffy. (I was watching The Fall on BBC iPlayer as I was baking, can you tell?!) It’s much easier to use a hand mixer when creaming your butter and sugar, and I use my Kenwood K-Mix one.

Whilst I’ve been off work recovering from last Friday’s knee surgery for the last couple of days, boredom is taking its’ toll. I can’t stand for long periods. I can’t drive, and can only walk very short distances. What I can do, though, is browse the internet for ideas from inspirational people. My friend Lynn over on Ink Sugar Spice, shared a delicious recipe recently for Pistachio and Mascarpone Cream Viennese Sandwiches. I have no pistachio paste, but I do have (and love) Nielsen Massey Coffee Extract, and as well all love coffee in this house, it was a done deal!

Digging out my old trusty Be-Ro recipe book that my mum bought me many, many years ago (it was my first ever cook book). I know that this recipe works as I’ve used it lots in the past. Just a tweak and a little twist was all it needed to produce these deliciously crumbly and delicately tasting biscuits.

Transfer the filing mixture to a piping bag and pipe a circle on to half of the biscuits. Sandwich the other half of the biscuits together.

These will keep for a couple of days in the fridge (store them there, due to the butter and Philadelphia), but allow them to come back to room temperature to improve the flavour and smooth texture of the filling.

Thanks to Lynn for giving me the inspiration to play with this old recipe and to give it a different little twist.

It’s my husband’s birthday today and his requested treat was for a tiramisu, however I’ve made (& we’ve eaten) one over the Christmas / New Year period already, and birthdays are all about a cake, after all, aren’t they? So, with this in mind, I dug out my recipe notebook and went to find a recipe that I came up with a couple of years ago and made him a tiramisu inspired coffee cake instead; therefore we both win – he gets his tiramisu, and I get to make a cake! Here’s how:

280g Butter

280g Caster Sugar

280g Self Raising Flour

5 Eggs

5ml Baking Powder

15ml Camp coffee essence

2.5ml Nielsen Massey Coffee extract

To drizzle the cake with:

10ml Instant coffee

10ml Hot water

20ml Amaretto

Frosting:

250g Mascarpone cheesse

150ml Double cream

60ml Amaretto

5 Tbs icing sugar

To decorate:

Cocoa powder

1. Preheat the oven to 180℃.

2. Grease & line two 20cm/8″ round cake tins.

3. Using the all in one method, to a large bowl, add the butter, caster sugar, flour, eggs, baking powder, Camp coffee and coffee extract. Using the all in one method, beat together until well combined (about 4-5 minutes).

4. Divide equally between your two cake tins and bake for 25-30 minutes until cooked.

5. Remove from the oven, allow to cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then remove from the tins onto a wire cooling rack until cold.

6. Mix together the instant coffee and water, stir until dissolved. Add the amaretto and leave to cool.

7. For the frosting, beat together the mascarpone cheese, cream, amaretto and icing sugar.

8. Place half of the cake onto a serving plate and drizzle with half of the coffee and amaretto.

9. Spread the cake half with about a third of the mascarpone cheese frosting.

10. Top with the other half of the cake and drizzle this with the remaining half of the coffee and amaretto mixture.

11. Spread the cake with the remaining mascarpone cheese frosting and dust the cake with the cocoa.